Air Quality

The standard of Air Quality is an ever-increasing harm to your health if it’s quite poor. Indoor air pollutants are one of the biggest contributors of staff falling ill at work. Poor or inadequate air ventilation, contaminated materials and increasing number of bodies in a room all play a factor to poor air quality. Inhaling airborne contaminants can cause serious psychological problems to your health. It has been proven that inhaling these harmful contaminants have links to respiratory diseases such as mesothelioma, asthma, allergic alveolitis and links to sick-building syndrome. But preventions of poor air quality are available. There are certain floor coverings, such as DESSO’s AirMaster, or even maintain the cleanliness of your office space on a daily basis are ways to prevent air contaminants from effecting your health.

Causes of Poor Indoor Air Quality

Dust

We spend roughly 90% of our days indoors, that’s 22 hours a day. So falling ill due to poor air quality is more common than you think. According to the World Health Organisation, 4.3 million people die per year due to household (indoor) air pollution. And one of the main contributors is the spreading of fine dust.

Fine Dust is a mixture and collection of harmful chemicals that mix together when they meet or when somebody walks across the carpet, causing friction allowing these chemicals to meet. The chemicals in fine dust usually involve minute elements of heavy metals, soot, organic substances & dioxins. The smaller the diameter of these dust particles are, the more harmful they can be to your lungs.

Broken down into the size in diameter, fine dust is usually labelled by its more scientific name Particulate Matter (PM). As previously stated, the smaller these particles are, the more damaging they are to your health.

Particulate matter enters the body through your nose and throat. There it will enter your respiratory lung. 10μm sized PM’s are most often eliminated through sneezing, coughing or swallowing. But smaller PM’s like 2.5μm enter and penetrate your respiratory system, thus causing health problems. These smaller particles can have serious health complications to the alveoli, bronchioles and trachea, with potential risks of getting pneumoconiosis (lung disease caused by overexposure to inhaling dust).

Solutions to Prevent Dust Affecting Your Health

DESSO's AirMaster Carpet

Carpets are more likely to prevent fine dust from being released into the atmosphere than hard flooring. But carpets still tend to release dust. The solution, use DESSO’s AirMaster carpet. Dust is retained by the AirMaster’s unique carpet yarns. Then it breaks down the dust particles preventing them from being airborne again.

Maintain Cleanliness

It sounds simple but it’s efficient. Constantly check-up on your ventilation systems as this is key as they tend to build up a large amount of dust when they haven’t been checked in a long time. Hoover your floors regular as well. A hoover is a lot more efficient than using a brush/broom as it collects most of the dust particles when in use.

Other Sources

Ventilation System

If your office starts to get regularly humid and warm, then that could be a very bad thing. Because warm temperature indoors creates mold. Ventilation systems can often short-cycle, meaning they don’t run long enough to distribute Thus; mold creates hazardous toxic allergens and irritants that can cause some cases of asthma. The humidity of your office should be around 30-60%. Heating, air-conditioning and ventilation systems when in warmer conditions can also attract humid air from the outside inside your office.

Outdoor Air Pollution

Outdoor air can also negatively affect your own indoor air quality. Some cooling and heating systems attract outdoor air contaminants filter some outdoor air pollutants and allergens and can be causes to asthma triggers. Air pollution is a big concern in Europe. 467,000 recorded deaths in total due to air pollution. These harmful air pollution particles can thus enter indoors as well and cause more problems.

Solutions to Ventilation Systems

Continuous cleaning check-ups are important in your ventilation systems to clean up the build-up of dust. But some ventilation systems can help reduce the amount of poor air quality in the room. There are two types of ventilation, spot ventilation & dilution ventilation. Spot ventilation remove humidity and carbon monoxide through exterior fans that push it from indoors into the outdoor atmosphere. Dilution ventilation captures all the air change in the air, and then they filter out all the bad particles in a process called ‘air cleaning’. The air cleaning is completed when all particles are filtered out and when air is dehumidified. This removes all harmful dust particles from the air and removes any type of moisture or mold. To install a ventilation system that can achieve both spot & dilution ventilation, then visit the Air Conditioning Contractors Association website.